


Fog

by earlybloomingparentheses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Mild canon divergence, Mystery, RS Fireside Tales, Sirius escapes Azkaban early, Train Travel, Various European cites, noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-12 06:14:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17462135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses
Summary: I let the icy wind batter my face as I put my back towards the flickering lights of the bars and brothels and faced the roiling River Seine. As slippery with drink and clouded with the dregs of last week’s ill-advised Pink Elephant Potion as my mind was, I knew that I had not imagined him this time. Sirius Black had sat down at a table across the dimly-lit bistro and, lighting up a cigarette, had stared me directly in the eyes through the smoky haze. He’d flicked a glowing ember onto the red-and-white-checked tablecloth and leaned back in his chair, watching.Written forR/S Fireside Tales 2019!





	Fog

**Author's Note:**

> Written for R/S Fireside Tales! The prompt was the quote at the beginning. This fic ended up leaning more towards mysterious noir atmosphere than spooky/scary.

_ The fog blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, howling, as swollen waves crashed into the piers of the bridges below. _

– Théophile Gautier, Hashish, Wine, Opium

 

He had followed me here—all the way to Paris.

Years ago, after he had escaped from prison, I saw him in cafes and chippies, in dingy pub bathrooms at two a.m. and down the alleyway where I used to buy cheap packets of charmed weed from a sallow-faced Squib known as the Rake. Bedraggled waves of pitch-black hair, the line of a tattoo branching up from the wrist of a leather jacket, a certain insouciant way of holding a cigarette so that ash fell on the shoes of anyone unwise enough to stand too close: all these sure signs that Sirius Black had tracked me down at last proved to be liars, every time, when the man I was eyeing turned to reveal a snub nose or a plaid tie or a warm smile. Disappointment would rise in my throat like bile, even though I believed then that I never wanted to see him again. I wanted to be important enough for him to hunt.

I let the icy wind batter my face as I put my back towards the flickering lights of the bars and brothels and faced the roiling River Seine. As slippery with drink and clouded with the dregs of last week’s ill-advised Pink Elephant Potion as my mind was, I knew that I had not imagined him this time. Sirius Black had sat down at a table across the dimly-lit bistro and, lighting up a cigarette, had stared me directly in the eyes through the smoky haze. He’d flicked a glowing ember onto the red-and-white-checked tablecloth and leaned back in his chair, watching.

His face looked like it had in all the  _ Daily Prophet  _ photos since his exoneration the year before. Bony, sunken. Forbidding. Like a bird of prey, or a wild dog.

I’d drained my glass of gin, calmly laid a few Muggle francs on the table, and walked out into the howling night. As the door shut behind me, closing off the little box of light and warmth, I turned my collar up against the rain and walked toward the river, hands trembling violently.

Why now?

I couldn’t stop myself from wondering. Why now? Why, on this night thick with fog on the edge of an angry river in a foreign country, had Sirius Black finally come to find me?

I felt a prickle on the back of my neck, like the prickle of eyes, yellow animal eyes in the bushes, wolf eyes, dog eyes, the eyes of some creature hidden in the dense darkness of the Forbidden Forest. I had always been able to sense his gaze, more than Peter’s, more than James’, though after they became Animagi all three of them had had a strange inhuman undercurrent to them. I trained my eyes on the river for as long as I could, icy rain trickling down the collar of my coat, until I gave in, as I always had, and turned to look at him.

He was standing under the awning of the bistro, obscured by the water pouring off the striped fabric in steady streams. His cigarette glowed. His eyes were in shadow.

I hunched my shoulders deeper into my overcoat and began to walk away, over the slick stones of the sidewalk along the river. After a moment, he followed. I couldn’t hear his footfalls, not with the way the fog muffled them and the rain dampened them and the wind whistled them away, but I knew he was following. I turned away from the Seine, undecided as yet whether I should let him follow me all the way home, or whether I should keep wandering through the night. The streets were safe enough now, the frigid storm chasing muggers and lowlifes away, and even on more forgiving evenings the scars on my face and the knife in my pocket tended to work as well as a Misdirection Charm.

There were only two lawbreakers out on the streets that I was aware of, and one of them had been falsely accused. The other was me.

I led him towards the Rue Saint-Denis. Just to see what would happen, I guess. Red lights hung in rain-streaked windows and neon signs advertised “ _ Cine Sex _ ” and “ _ Cuirs - Lingerie - Latex _ .” Most of  _ les filles de joie  _ were tucked inside for the night, but a few hovered, shivering, in doorways.

He followed. Head down, boots filling with water and fingers numb, I trudged through the red light district, sensing him behind me all the while.

Why now?

I don’t know what I thought—that he’d be put off by the seedy neighborhood, or impressed by my familiarity with it. When he had known me, I had needed coaxing to sneak out past curfew. I had gotten drunk, easily, on one glass of Firewhiskey, and let him blow me in other people’s bathrooms. I had been plenty of forbidden places, but only at his urging. Those days were long gone. I knew other parts of Paris where steps led down to velvet-choked rooms full of pretty boys with wide pupils and long couches where witches and wizards still imbibed Opium Draughts and paid in cash for Hallucination Charms. I walked the streets at night and slept during the day, scribbling my fragmented observations on the city, as if anyone wanted to read the maudlin ramblings of an expat werewolf.

_ Expat  _ was romanticizing. My werewolf registration had run out, and I had left the country illegally rather than renew it. I wondered if Sirius knew.

I gave into temptation and snuck a glance over my shoulder. There he was, dark coat dripping, a shadowy figure half-swallowed by the fog, keeping his distance, but keeping pace.

I swallowed my fear and my better judgment and what was left of my pride, and led him home.

 

 

_ Home  _ was a third-floor flat in the nineteenth arrondissement with a shared toilet and mould along the baseboards. I let the front door swing open as I walked through and, as I reached the first landing, I heard his footsteps echoing up the stairs behind me.

Water dripped from my hair as I unlocked the two deadbolts and whispered the charm to turn off the alarm, then pushed inside. The flat was dark and smelled of this morning’s coffee grounds. His footfalls grew closer. I switched on a couple of floor lamps and shed my wet coat. A shadow fell across the sliver of light that spilled through the cracked-open door to the corridor.

The door opened.

“Hello, Remus,” said Sirius Black, and my hands began to shake once more.

 

 

My voice did not seem to work. I nodded towards the folding chairs that graced my pockmarked table and turned to put the kettle on. My socks were drenched and my feet itched to be out of them. I pulled down the extra-large flimsy cardboard box of tea bags and a couple of thrift store mugs. My one good teacup, cream-colored china edged with gold, remained in the cupboard. He had been there when Lily had given it to me, that last Christmas before she died.

I was not sure I wanted to bring those memories into the dim space between us.

Sirius lit another cigarette. I heard the whispered charm fall from his lips, as I had heard it hundreds, thousands of times before. The lip of the kettle clanged against the mugs as I poured the water with my shaky hands.

I set the tea on the table—black, as he had taken his years ago, and as I took mine now—and let my legs lower me into the chair across from his. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, and then held his cigarette out to me.

I took it, careful not to brush his fingers, and took a long drag.

The rain hammered against the windows. My flat was chilly, as usual. The tea scalded my numb hands as I wrapped them around the mug, but I kept hold of it anyway.

“I need your help,” Sirius said. “I want you to help me do something.”

I looked at him.  _ Why now?  _ Not a lovers’ reunion, not a long-belated explanation,  _ this is why I didn’t tell you about switching Secret-Keepers, this is why I didn’t find you sooner, this is why I didn’t climb through your window and hold you down till you knew I wasn’t guilty the moment I escaped the Dementors.  _ Just, after seven years, four of them as a free man and one of them not even a wanted one,  _ I need your help. _

I unlaced my soggy boots and kicked them onto the floor.

“You’ve got sixty seconds, and then you’re hitting the pavement,” I said.

His eyes flickered. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his rain-soaked, matted hair making him look a little deranged. “This won’t take sixty seconds,” he said. “And you’re not going to kick me out.”

Resentment washed up hot and burning in my throat. “I wouldn’t be so cocky, Sirius.”

“Not cocky,” he said. His voice was hoarser than I remembered. “Just sure.”

“What, then?” I asked, fingering the wand in my pocket. I could get him out if I wanted to.

His eyes bored into mine. His cigarette had gone out, but his hand held the butt of it absently. The hollows of his cheeks were shadowed pools.

“I need you,” he said, “to help me find Harry.”

 

 

A long time ago, two beautiful people had a beautiful baby. For the first fifteen months of his life, the baby lived in the little town of Godric’s Hollow, a sleepy enclave that guarded him against a worsening war and the pursuit of those whom his parents dared to oppose. And then, on Halloween night, that small safe world was breached. The boy’s parents were killed. One friend betrayed them and another was blamed, and by the time the third friend returned home from his mission in the Outer Hebrides, the young boy had been spirited away by the leader of the resistance, sent somewhere to be raised in secrecy and safety until he grew old enough to begin his wizarding education.

The third friend tried to track down the boy, but he was well hidden and Albus Dumbledore was as stubborn and imperturbable as a fucking mountain, so Remus Lupin faded into the grey edges of wizarding society, and Harry Potter grew up where no one could find him.

“I’ve looked,” Sirius said, scratching at my table with a jagged fingernail. “When I could, those first few years, and all the time, since I was exonerated.”

“I looked too,” I said sharply.

“I know. A couple of the people I talked to mentioned you.  _ Haven’t been asked about Harry Potter since that young man, what was his name, desperate he was and a little frightening— _ ” Sirius cut off abruptly. He raised his mug to his lips without looking at it and gulped down several swallows of the steaming tea.

“He’s well hidden.” The memory of my failure twisted itself in my gut like barbed wire. All my friends gone, and Harry gone too. And I could do nothing.

“Dumbledore won’t budge,” Sirius said, voice bitter. “I thought if I cleared my name—I’m his godfather. Voldemort’s long gone. He should be living with me.”

I looked at his sunken face, his yellowed teeth. The ratty edges of his sleeves. He smelled like wet dog and cigarette smoke.

“Fuck you,” Sirius bit out, looking at my doubtful face, and got to his feet, the chair screeching across the floorboards.

“Drink your goddamn tea,” I retorted, startling us both. “Sit. Don’t be an arse, Sirius.”

Slowly, Sirius sat.

“I left Britain illegally,” I said. “My werewolf registration came up for renewal, and…” I shrugged. The date had crept up on me, as it did every ten years, and I had watched it coming for a long time. Then, in the early hours of the morning on the day I had to present myself to the Ministry, I had packed my battered suitcase and taken an unregistered Portkey across the Channel.

Something gleamed in Sirius’ eyes. “Well,” he said, “I’m pretty sure Harry isn’t in Britain.”

The rain battered the roof like gunfire and howled against the windows. Even through the noise I could hear a wet cough from the flat below mine. I thought of the velvet rooms and the boys with blown pupils and the silvery softness of an Opium Draught. I thought of my handful of scribbles on “The Back Streets of Paris,” “The Witches of the Eighth Arrondissement,” “Absinthe and Firewhiskey.” I thought of how easy it would have been for him to find me before now.

“Sleep on the couch tonight,” I said. “But take off your wet clothes first. We’ll leave in the morning.”

Sirius stared at me, like he couldn’t believe his ears. But then he nodded, one jerk of his head, and I got up from the table and walked into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.

I woke to a morning so grey and wet it might have been mistaken for night. The rain had not subsided. My head ached. My clothes were heaped in a pile on the tiny patch of floor next to my twin-sized mattress, still soggy and smelling like it.

I walked out into the rest of the flat. Sirius Black was lying on my couch, wide awake and naked, his own wet clothes spread on the table to dry.

He looked hungrily into my eyes, and I looked hungrily back.

The rough carpet scratched my knees and my vision swam as I swallowed him down, choking back a gag. He pumped rapidly into my mouth, hips shaking the mouldy couch. He gripped my hair in his bony fingers as he came. For a long moment I could not breathe. I did not particularly want to breathe. Even so, I bit down very gently, just the faintest hint of teeth. His dark eyes bored into mine. He did not let go.

And then he did, and I rubbed myself off mindlessly against his leg, and then we ate dry toast in silence and I packed a bag.

“Belgium,” he answered when I asked where we were going. “Bruges.”

Gingerbread houses, and fairytale swans in the canals. Had James and Lily’s son really grown up there, tucked away in a city whose worst threat came from invading tourists? Doubt flickered in my mind. What did either of us have to offer him?

“We can take the train. Portkeys are too noticeable, and it’s not worth Apparating that far,” Sirius said, bent over what looked like a change purse he’d taken from the pocket of his discarded trousers. He stuck his whole hand inside, and then his arm, and came out with a wrinkled pair of socks and a grubby notebook. “You should pack a bag. Train leaves in an hour.”

I did as he said, though I bristled at the order. Three changes of clothes; spare quills and parchment; an old photo of myself, James, Lily, and Sirius—with one rough edge where I’d ripped off Peter’s image—in case the eight-year-old Harry, assuming we ever found him, was suspicious of two bedraggled men turning up on his doorstep; and a flask of the Tranquiliser Potion I forced down my throat when I felt the monthly change coming on, though the full moon was not for weeks yet. It left me with a terrible hangover and bloodshot eyes, but it was better than the alternatives.

The Gare du Nord swarmed with travelers. Trains screeched and babies screamed. My headache began to knock insistently against the inside of my skull; it had been a long time since I’d been in a place this crowded during the daytime. Sirius and I slipped on board the 9:26 to Bruges via Brussels by casting a Distraction Charm on the Muggle conductor. He took a seat on the upper floor, slumping moodily against the rain-spattered window, and I sat across from him, shutting my eyes against my headache and his too-thin face.

The train chugged into life. I have long had an affinity for train rides, stretching back even further than the Hogwarts Express, to an early memory from when I was three or four and my mother had taken me on a day trip to Brighton. I have vague images of the glare of the sun out the window and my sticky hands and fighting to keep my drooping eyelids open on the way home, determined not to miss any of the scenery, mundane as it was, that rushed by. On another day and in different company—or, let’s be honest, another day and the same company—I’d have stored up each wet field, each rain-slicked splash of graffiti, as the train hurried us from France to Belgium. But today, my head pounded, and all I wanted was to breathe fresh air.

The station in Bruges was just outside the inner city, beyond the boundary where stone walls had once protected the town from medieval invaders. Now, only the lumpy remains of earthworks and a few arched gates stood guard over a city best known for chips, canals, and fancy lace. Sirius and I wound through cobbled streets, backtracking occasionally as he consulted his notebook to lead us through the mazelike city, which seemed to boast at least ten roads named Mariastraat. I had expected Bruges to seem jarringly picturesque after the grit of underground Paris, but a cold wind was whistling over the ornate stepped rooftops and the murky canals, blowing up a thin chilly spray that dampened our clothes and our spirits. Few tourists were out in this season and this weather; I watched a pair of Japanese Muggles struggle as gusts of wind attempted to rip their map out of their hands.

“He wouldn’t be living in the wizarding section, would he?” I asked Sirius finally, glancing jealously into a chip shop, where cones of hot greasy potatoes glistened with cream-colored globs of mayonnaise. 

“Who?” Sirius asked, looking distractedly down a winding street.

“Harry.”

Sirius stopped. “Oh,” he said. “Harry’s not here. Lily’s sister’s husband used to have a cousin in Bruges, that’s all. A banker. I thought he might have some idea where Petunia and Vernon ended up. I’ve always thought it was suspicious that they disappeared right after James and Lily died.”

Of course. This would hardly be a quick, simple trip, not with Sirius Black. Irritation flared and I kicked a loose stone down the narrow sidewalk. “They moved to Greece with their son,” I said. “Something for Vernon Dursley’s job.”

“Right, supposedly.” replied Sirius, glancing at the rain-slicked street signs. “But I couldn’t find them there after I escaped.”

I had not been able to find them there either, and I’d been looking just months after Vernon Dursley’s alleged transfer. But then, my money had run out before I could exhaust all the possibilities, and I had declared to the Wizarding Travel Authority that I would return to Britain before the next full moon, so it was possible I’d missed them. The fact that Sirius had not found them either strengthened the conviction I’d had at the time—that they’d gone into hiding with Harry at Albus Dumbledore’s request.

“So where’s this cousin?” I asked, suppressing the hot jolt of excitement I felt at the thought of a new lead. “And how do you know he knows anything about the Dursleys’ whereabouts?”

Sirius seemed to hesitate, scratching at the leather band around his wrist with a jagged fingernail. “I don’t,” he said after a moment. “But it’s worth checking. For Harry.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t argue with that, but I couldn’t bring myself to agree aloud either. So I stood mutely, hair blowing in the wind, until Sirius jerked his head for me to follow him down a side street hemmed in by brick and stone houses. It looked like something from Grimm’s fairy tales—the original, unpleasant versions—under the darkened sky. An appropriate kind of reversal, I thought: the two of us a werewolf and an ex-con, seemingly right at home amongst the villains from those Muggle tales of ravenous witches and evil enchanters; but instead we were acting the part of lost peasants, following a trail of breadcrumbs towards some mysterious truth.

Well. Towards a Muggle banker, anyway.

As the wind was starting to turn into rain, a harsh mist against our faces, Sirius stopped outside the door of a flat-faced red brick house whose edges pressed up against the houses next door, one of a row of two-story residences with bicycles parked on the narrow cobbled sidewalks. The doors to the left and right were painted cheerful red, but the Dursley cousin’s door was plain white.

Sirius knocked. We stood outside, undoubtedly looking bedraggled and disreputable. I wondered why Sirius thought anyone related to that lump of a man Lily’s sister had married would let us in the door, let alone tell us anything about his cousin’s whereabouts, even if he knew. 

The door opened and a heavyset, red-faced man peered out. “I don’t speak Flemish,” he said immediately. “Or French.”

“Doesn’t everyone in Belgium know English?” Sirius asked mildly, hands in his pockets.

“Not everyone,” the man said darkly. Then his eyes narrowed. “Hang on. Are you Brits?”

“Yes we are. Happy to meet a fellow countryman,” Sirius added, with the same polite smile that had worked on Madame Pomfrey every time, Madame Pince once or twice, and Professor McGonagall, never.

“Well, well. What can I do for you?” said the man.

“Are you Alfie Dursley?” Sirius asked. “See, we’re old friends of Vernon’s—I’m Tom and this is Frank—and I remembered him saying he had a relative here, awhile back. And the Mug—the, er, directory said I might—”

“A friend of Vernon’s!” Alfie exclaimed. “Say no more. Come in, man, out of the wet.”

Sirius gave him his most charming smile—the one that had worked on even Professor McGonagall a few times—and stepped through the front door. Gratefully, I followed, nodding hello as we squeezed past Alfie Dursley. The front hall was narrow and decorated with photographs: a schoolboy cricket team, an old woman with Alfie’s thick eyebrows, and a photo of Petunia and Vernon holding a squashed-faced baby I assumed was their son. In the kitchen, a school rugby banner took prize of place on the off-white walls.

“I’ll make a cuppa,” said Alfie. “How d’you know Vernon, then?”

“We’re in drills,” said Sirius, taking a seat at the polished table. I raised my eyebrows; butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, I thought. Drills, indeed. But Alfie nodded.

“Ah, yeah. Makes sense. Vernon got on so well with everyone at the company—gets on, I mean.” For a second, Alfie surveyed us, forehead creased. “You don’t...you haven’t seen him recently, have you? If you know him from his time in Britain, that is.”

I expected one of Sirius’ signature pauses—buying time to think rapidly while putting on a vaguely wise expression—but he replied without hesitation. I supposed that being on the run had made him an even quicker bullshitter than before. “Ah, no,” he said. “Lost touch awhile back, I’m afraid. When he and his family—lovely woman, that Petunia—moved to—Greece, wasn’t it?”

Alfie sighed. “Ah, yeah. Look at him and me—Englishmen through and through, yet forced to live abroad for work. The things we do, eh?”

The faint hint of nationalism left a bitter taste in my mouth, but Sirius merely nodded sympathetically. “Wasn’t it some island or other? On the Aegean, maybe? At least the weather’s good.”

“Ionian, as a matter of fact,” said Alfie, “but they’re not there anymore.”

I stiffened, ears perking up. “Where did they go?” I asked.

Alfie looked at me as if startled to see me in his kitchen. “Don’t you know?”

Sirius said quickly, “We lost touch after that. I blame it on those foreign postal services—nothing like the British mail, not reliable at all—”

“You’re so right.” Alfie poured water from the electric kettle into a couple of mugs and pushed them towards us. “To be honest, I haven’t heard from Vernon in years. Last I knew they were living in Amsterdam, him and Petunia and the little lads—”

“Lads?” I asked sharply, my eyes meeting Sirius’ with an almost tangible spark. Sirius looked surprised for the first time that day.

A puzzled expression floated across Alfie’s face. Then he shook his head, as if to clear it. “Did I say lads? I meant lad, of course. Dudley, their son.”

Concealing my excitement, I sat back, exchanging a meaningful glance with Sirius. The distant look that had come into Alfie’s eyes signalled a Confundus Charm, if I recognized the signs correctly.

“Amsterdam,” Sirius said. “Could be worse, I s’pose.”

Alfie let out a dissatisfied grunt. “Dunno. Vernon said they were stuck in a creaky old flat right off one of the canals—damp, you know. And some woman with about a hundred cats lived next door. Smelled.”

“Terrible,” said Sirius. He stood abruptly. “Well, you know, we’d better be off.”

“Oh?” Alfie asked, surprised.”Don’t you want that cuppa?”

“My friend Frank has just remembered, he’s got an urgent meeting to attend. Thanks lots, Alfie. You’re exactly what I expected.”

And as Alfie was struggling to decide whether that was a compliment, Sirius pointed his wand at him and said, “ _ Obliviate. _ ”

 

 

Sirius jerked me off in the dirty bathroom on the train to Amsterdam in the middle of the night. I braced myself against the cramped walls and didn’t breath through my nostrils in order to hold back the smell of disinfectant and piss. The noise of the train drowned out my harsh gasps as I came into his hand. Sirius wiped his fingers on a paper towel.

We arrived in Amsterdam in the early morning. Like Paris, it was a city that was beautiful if you looked in the right places and not so much if you looked in the wrong ones. As it turned out, we needed to look in the wrong ones. I didn’t think that Alfie had given us enough information to find out much, if anything, about the Dursleys’ location, but Sirius located a list of drill companies with branches in the city on a computer in a directory in the library, and then a couple of old newspaper articles about cat rescuers.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a spot on a city map. “There’s a locally notorious cat lady who lives here, or used to. It’s near one of the places Vernon Dursley might have transferred. And it’s on a canal.”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“That was quick work.”

He gave a ghost of his old grin, crooked and cocky. “Well. I’m good.”

Heat flared up inside me, but, alarmingly, not in the region of my trousers. My heart thudded painfully against my chest and I felt my face grow pink.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” I said brusquely.

“All right,” Sirius said, sounding slightly put out.

We left the library and walked a good hour and a half to the address of the cat lady, not wanting to spend money on public transit or draw magical attention by Apparating. It was cold. The wind blew through my thin jacket. I buried my hands in my pockets and thought about the magical back alleys of Amsterdam, which I had heard about at length from a pretty boy in Paris with a tendency towards weepy nostalgia when he was high. Bastiaan had told me about a wizard he had met one night, a painter, who had swept him off his feet, calling him his muse, showering him with gifts and praise, before sneaking out of Bastiaan’s flat five days later in the middle of the night, stealing three bottles of cheap champagne and painting a giant ugly rose on the front door. Bastiaan’s roommate had put her hand in the oil paint and it had stayed purple for a month.

I glanced over at Sirius, the impulse to share this story dying on my lips. I did not think I would have been able to stop myself from narrating what had happened once the young man had dried his eyes and turned to me with a damp but unmistakably flirtatious smile.

It seemed a very narrow possibility that we would find Harry at the end of our walk, but my stomach churned anyway. I felt my pulse quicken as the house came into view, a narrow stairstepped apartment building so close to the water a car wouldn’t fit outside. I wished I had a glass of strong gin or a Relaxing Potion.

Sirius opened the dark wooden front door of the building with a brazenness that seemed startling, even for him. But it only opened onto a narrow corridor, dark and musty, the air thick with the smell of cats. A long, faded rug, maroon and dingy, lined the wooden floorboards. At the end of the hallway, a tight spiral staircase led to the floors above. I glanced at the flat numbers as we walked. As we passed one of the doors, a chorus of yowling started up from behind it.

Sirius raised his eyebrows at me and then knocked.

The door opened just a crack. The wrinkled face of an old woman with wispy hair and suspicious eyes looked out at us.

“What do you want?” she asked in impatient English.

“Oh, sorry, wrong flat!” Sirius said. “I was looking for Vernon and Petunia Dursley.”

If anything, her eyes grew even more suspicious at that.

“Who?”

“Oh, er—old friends of ours. Lost touch awhile back. I was hoping to...I’m sorry, hang on, are you—are you Arabella Figg? It’s just—I’m a  _ huge  _ cat lover, really just—and Petunia told me she was living next to someone with the most beautiful cats, and…”

The door swung open just a crack wider.

“Petunia never seemed to like my cats.” The woman sniffed. “Always turning up her nose at them.”

Sirius gave a rueful smile. Merlin, I thought wonderingly, he’s still so full of shit. “Oh, well,” he replied apologetically, “she’s  _ so _ plagued by her need to keep things tidy, honestly, I think she suffers, just can’t help herself. But she knew how much I loved the creatures and when she wasn’t fretting about hair on her carpets she was sharp enough to know how special yours were.”

The door swung wide, and a small older woman stood with her hands on her hips, wearing a faded plaid dressing gown and carpet slippers.

“Come in and meet them.”

 

 

The flat was lined with heavy grey carpeting and dark fleur-de-lis wallpaper. I counted at least a dozen cats perched on the scratched Victorian chairs and chaises and draped atop grubby lace antimacassars. They followed me with wide sinister eyes.

Arabella Figg—whose name I vaguely recalled from the newspaper articles Sirius had found—served us milky tea in cups not entirely clean of cat hairs. As she ran through a long list of their names, ages, and ailments, I wondered idly if Sirius often hid his hair under a knitted cap like the one he wore now. I caught myself thinking that I missed the sight of it brushing Sirius’ neck and turned my attention sharply back to Mrs. Figg.

Sirius let the old woman on a long circuitous path back to the subject of the Dursley family. She grumbled about Vernon’s complaints and cigarettes and Petunia’s nose-in-the-air attitude and the son, Dudley’s, disregard for the elderly. “And he pulled my cats’ tails,” she said, as if this settled the matter of the boy’s moral character and future in life once and for all.

Sirius nodded and tutted at appropriate intervals and then began a rambling story of his own about learning the Durselys were moving abroad. “We kept in touch for awhile, but then I rang up one day—granted, it had been about a year since we’d spoken,” Sirius said after about five minutes of this, “and they’d moved out! And, goodness, I know they aren’t the easiest folks to get along with, but...well, it seemed a shame. I knew Petunia in school, you know. Pretty girl she was then.”

Mrs. Figg surveyed him with a calculating look in her eye. “I see,” she said. “An old flame.”

For a split second I saw mirth and alarm battling for control in Sirius’ eyes. Then he smoothed out his expression and gave her a sheepish smile. “You’ve hit the nail on the head, I’m afraid.” And he bent down to stroke a bowlegged cat who was clawing at his leg.

Mrs. Figg leaned in. “Well. Since you’re old friends, I suppose it won’t hurt. They didn’t tell me where they were going, but I found out. I wasn’t snooping, mind. I just happened to see a letter that was postmarked from their new house. As it turned out, they were moving to Denmark. I wouldn’t remember the name of the town, but my cousin went there on holiday once. Northernmost town in the country. Skagen, it’s called.”

I looked sharply over at Sirius, heart giving a sudden jolt. “When was this?” I asked, leaning in.

“Oh...a year or so ago.  _ No _ , Archibald,” she added, pushing away the nose of a ginger tabby who was about to stick his face in Sirius’ teacup. “You have your own teacup in the kitchen.”

“Do you know if they’re still in Denmark?” I pressed.

She shook her head. “I didn’t keep in touch.”

Sirius got to his feet. “Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Figg. And, er, sorry about this.” He pulled out his wand and cast a Memory Charm. As Mrs. Figg was shaking her head, befuddled, Sirius looked at me, a gleam in his eye.

“Time to go, Moony.”

 

 

The bus ride to Denmark took nearly a full day. We wound north, through Germany, stopping in Bremen and Hamburg and driving through dark woods. Sirius and I barely spoke. I drifted in and out of sleep. My night wanderings in Paris and the subsequent travels were catching up to me. The bus was only half-full; passengers got on and off board, smelling of liquor and sweat and fast food. I drank cups of black coffee from the places we stopped, but they only added jitters on top of my drowsiness.

As we drove up through Denmark the countryside grew quite pleasant. It was late in the year and the days were short this far north, but when at long last we stepped out into the low afternoon sun, stretching our cramped muscles, the air was crisp and clean.

Skagen offered a sharp contrast to the freezing Paris rain and the overcast weather in Amsterdam. Even fairytale Bruges had been gloomy and forbidding. The Danish sky was clear, with just a few low white clouds. We walked along to the harbor, where we could look out over the peninsula that divided the North Sea from the straits of Denmark. Boats bobbed and a couple of small blonde children, twin sisters by the look of them, chased each other back and forth as their parents stood back, engaged in conversation.

“Do you think Harry really lives here?” I asked quietly. The sun was beginning to set, reflecting rosy and orange on the water.

Sirius was silent. “I suppose we’d better find out,” he said eventually.

But we stayed looking out over the water till night fell, listening to the sounds of a gentle breeze and the sleepy chirping of birds, and I found myself thinking of my lapsed werewolf registration in Britain, and my mouldy flat in Paris, which barely offered enough room for me. Did Sirius have somewhere in mind that was big and bright enough for an eight-year-old boy?

And even if he did—would I be welcome there?

 

 

Skagen saw many more tourists each year than it had residents, but in the off-season the city center was quiet, and the shops had a small-town feel. Sirius asked around about an English family with two boys, one of them who looked like he was prone to pulling cats’ tails and the other with a head of dark hair and bright green eyes.

“Ah, you mean the, ah, what’s-their-names. Dunlops?” said the elderly man behind the counter of the bakery in accented English.

“Dursleys,” said his young assistant, a woman with numerous piercings and purple streaks in her hair. “Dudley, that’s the big kid. Comes in here whining for his parents to buy him three cookies instead of two, and they do it, too. And the other one, yeah, quiet kid, skinny. Harry, that’s his name.”

My heart stopped. For a second I thought I had drunk too much absinthe in Paris and the effects were catching up to me. But then my breath started up again, and I found my hands were shaking.

“They live around here?” Sirius asked. His voice was admirably steady; he almost managed to make the question sound offhand.

“Mmm, somewhere a bit further out. The wife’s always going on about her begonias.”

It was not difficult to find them in end. A combination of a Location Charm and some nosing around led us through quiet streets of yellow-plasted, red-shingled houses to a cottage with a small front yard edged by leafy trees. It seemed to glow with light as we looked at it from the cobbled road. In the big front window, we could see a dining table set for dinner, with a vase of flowers in the center. A woman—Petunia—was bustling in and out with steaming dishes.

Harry was well fed. Harry was living in a cozy house, safe, in a Danish town on the water.

What could Sirius or I possibly give him?

“God aften!” A cheerful voice rang out from the yard next door. “Hvad kan jeg hjælpe dig med?”

Sirius gave a start. Both of us tore our eyes away from the Dursleys’ house and looked over at their neighbor, an apple-cheeked man with a pipe and round belly.

“Sorry,” I called out from the dark lane. “We, er—we only speak English.”

“Oh, ja,” said the neighbor, getting to his feet and walking nearer. “You’ve come from England?”

“Well,” I said. “In a roundabout sort of way. We were in Amsterdam yesterday.”

“And what brings you to Skagen?” His voice was friendly, but it was clear he was wondering what two strange men were doing on his quiet street.

“It’s a funny thing,” I said. “We’re old friends of Vernon and Petunia Dursley. We’d lost track of them for a bit, but just found out they’d moved here—”

“Wait a moment,” said the man, peering past me at Sirius. “I know you. You were here a few months ago. You asked my wife about that family then. I saw you from my kitchen.”

I did not understand what he was saying—he was mistaken, surely? or I was confused?—until Sirius darted me a swift glance, his gaze wary and assessing.

“You—you’ve been here before?” My voice was hoarse as I grasped him by his upper arm. He winced as my fingers dug into him, which made me squeeze harder. “What the fuck is going on, Sirius?”

The little round Danish man cleared his throat. I glared at Sirius, then pulled him away, down the street, leaving the man staring curiously after us.

I rounded a corner and shoved him down onto a bench at a vacant bus stop. A streetlamp glowed, casting his dark hair and sunken face into sharp shadow.

“You knew Harry was here,” I said. I was breathing hard, my blood pounding in my ears. “You already fucking knew.”

“Yes,” Sirius said quietly. He made no move to get up from the bench. His eyes followed me as I paced in front of him.

“How long?” I asked, rounding on him. “How long did you leave Harry here, while you—you—”

“Two months,” Sirius said. “For fuck’s sake, Remus.”

“ _ Why? _ ”

He fumbled in his pockets for a moment, then pulled out a cigarette. He clenched it between his teeth and muttered “ _ Incendio. _ ” A little orange light flared up. He took a long drag and then pulled the cigarette from his mouth and let it dangle at his side.

“I was deciding what to do.”

He took another drag.

“And why—what the hell was this little charade, then?” I thought furiously of the trains, the maps, the buses, the sex. “What the fuck sort of game were you playing with me—”

“Not a game,” he said quietly, through the cigarette clenched in his teeth.

“You show up out of nowhere, _ four years _ after you escaped Azkaban--and a whole year after you were exonerated, for Merlin’s sake—and then you—then you lie to me, play—play  _ mind  _ games with me—pretend you didn’t know where Harry was—shit, Sirius, had you talked to all those people before? The cat lady?”

Sirius sighed, then nodded.

“Oh my god.” I ran my hands through my hair, tugging at it abstractedly. “Oh my  _ god. _ ”

“Listen—”

“No. Fuck you. Fuck this. You’ve always been like this, you know that? Why do anything simply when you could run circles round everyone else? It’s because you’re selfish, Sirius. And it was selfish, leaving Harry here for a _ minute _ longer than you had to. And I’m done—I’m done waiting for you, waiting for you to show up and—and  _ explain— _ why you—why you never came  _ back— _ ”

I turned away. The streetlamp flickered a bit. A bird called from a tree somewhere out of sight.

“Forget it,” I said. The air went out of me all at once. I ran my hand over my face. “I’m going back to Paris.”

My footsteps echoed on the cobbled streets as I turned. I took a few steps, then a few more.

“I left Harry here because I couldn’t bear going to get him without you.”

Sirius’ voice floated to me through the darkness. I stopped moving.

“And I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

I turned back. He was leaning forward, his cigarette hanging forgotten in his hand. He was not quite looking at me in the eyes.

“I have a house in Wales,” Sirius said. He toed at a small pile of ash on the ground. “I bought it when I was exonerated. A little house up in the mountains. Come and live with me and Harry there.”

My mouth hung open. Something sharp and painful was happening in my chest.

“A...a house.”

Sirius nodded.

“But…” My mind struggled to string together words, objections. “But...my werewolf registration’s expired.”

Sirius shook his head. “You think we’re going to declare ourselves when we reenter Britain? After kidnapping Harry Potter?”

I swallowed. “I…”

Suddenly, Sirius flung his cigarette to the ground, strode over to me, grabbed my jacket by the lapels, and kissed me hard on the mouth.

“Come on,” he said, and set off in the direction of the Dursleys’ home.

I blinked after him, catching my breath, cursing up a storm at him in my head, and then followed.

 

“What if he’s happy?” I whispered to Sirius as we stood on the doorstep. “What if he doesn’t want to go?”

He glanced at me briefly, then knocked.

“I stayed long enough when I was here before to know that he’ll want to go.”

The door opened. A young boy stood there: skinny, messy-haired, wearing a too-big rugby shirt and broken glasses mended with tape. He had dark hair and glass-green eyes.

“Ja?” he asked, then, looking us up and down, switched to English. “Are you here for my parents?”

“No, Harry,” Sirius said, clapping a warm hand on my shoulder as I felt a smile inch improbably across my face. “We’re here for you.”  
  



End file.
